Template:Dkt outsourcing plan

From The Jolly Contrarian
Jump to navigation Jump to search

Complicatio: My division’s damned, by unfunny fate
To live unloved upon the ledger. We are but cost.
’Tis the rust and stain and curse of clammy gears
That require a ruinous peopling.
We’ve cut our cloth as best can do
But these myriad needed grunts, though housed in meagre lairs
Kept safe and well away from clientry, are yet a weight.
Each speaks the fractious tones of jargoned tongue
Such patter steep’d, til cup is cold, in leaves of dismal science.
Each a different dismal one, his language apt to smother.
Nuncle: We understand them not. Nor do they one other.
Inclusivia: “His”?
Complicatio: Pray forgiveness, Lady Inclusivia. Hers as well.
Inclusivia: And theirs.
Complicatio: Aye, them too. Yea, this is our strife: this bewild’ring ’scape
Of contraptions yoked and tethered as a many gender’d beast —
Upon whose discombobulating backs our common fate depends.
And, O! Dilemma! The very men who work these chainèd cranks —
Inclusivia: Men? Just men?
Complicatio: Oh! and women — and those unsure, or curious, or as yet unaligned—
Queen: The heavens doth anoint!
Complicatio: Milady?
Nuncle: Pray, spare your testy conjugation:
Their majesty doth get the point.
Queen: It is a pretty speech so far. But has it any meat?
Inclusivia: Or leguminous alternatives.
Complicatio: I — we — they — am and are and are obliged.
They whose allied cadence powers our truck —
Queen: The dismal ones?
Complicatio: Aye them, with all their rancour —
By their inevitable heft, they play as weighty anchors.
Nuncle: “Weighty anchors”? None call the Reverend Spooner!
Queen: There are eighty of these dismal scientists?
Nuncle: More like eight hundred —
Complicatio: Eager but, yegads, inconstant. Oafish! Fickle! Slow!
I wouldst speed my rate of stroke, only worser comes with sooner.
And so, my liege, my battle plan: we set these Morlocks free.
Queen: To do what?
Inclusivia: To see out their best and carefree lives, unchained of drudgery.
Uninjured by liv’d experience: happy, unstress’d — full, fair and abundant.
Nuncle: In other words, less gently put, they’ll make the lot redundant.
Complicatio: Thus, unbound by work-to-rule, we’ll drive the train
Around the clock, without relent
Night; day; rain; hail or shine — e’en upon the Sabbath.
Queen: Our crankshafts pedal not themselves, Complicatio.
You’ve said you’d let your experts go, so
Who shall turn thy grimy wheels, without fault or favour, food or rest?
Complicatio: You can hire them by the score in Bucharest.
They are legion: all thifty, keen and swift.
Queen: But unpossessed of needed knowhow that, by rank and yank, you sent away?
Complicatio: There are certain merchants, Ma’am whose special skill
Lies in collating squads of fruity youths, fresh harvested from school
And putting them at our bespoke disposal.
They bone them up upon our musty almanacks
Service catalogues, hymn-sheets, psalters, taxonomies and the like
And see them train’d, at pace, to keep to and stay upon our message.
Queen: What is this “special skill” whereof you speak?
To coach a bunch of wet-eared boys —
Inclusivia: — and girls, and grades between —
Queen: — to outperform our veterans? It sounds to us like sorcery.
Nuncle: “Outsourcery”, they call it. An amiable conjury,
Well-known to bewitch a gawping treasurer.
Complicatio: ’Tis more than cheeky sleight of hand, my liege.
Nuncle: ’Tis not. You’ll see. The logic’s flimsy.
Complicatio: ’Tis tried, tested and pronounced a win
By no lesser than McKinsey.